Friday, 10 April 2009
Sunburn
I have been in England for 2 1/2 years now, and it seems that I have lost any trace of tolerance for the Australian sun. I went to Ireland for a few days last week and was sunburned. And all this under a weak March sunshine and a scorching 12C. Winter in Australia would probably cook me like an egg.
Bankers
Bankers have never been popular people anywhere, although at the moment it's fair to say that they are among the least respected people in the country. When I arrived here the press was triumphantly proclaiming that the city of London had usurped Wall Street as the leading world financiers. This reputation has now been trashed, as the said bankers have been fingered as liable for the economic mess that the country, and the world, is now in.
The figurehead of the disaster, symbolising the looting of the collective wealth by pin striped criminals, is the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank is one of the country's premier financial institutions. In the recent economic collapse, it managed to lose stupendous piles of money and is now majority-owned by the national government. As a reward for such excellence in economic performance, the former head of the bank, Sir Fred Goodwin, was awarded a large pension - performance-based, of course - totalling around £700,000 per year. Given that we taxpayers are propping up the entire bank, people have generally found it a bit much that Sir Fred has walked away with a footballer-esque annual salary in retirement. Someone was so upset that he or she vandalised Sir Fred's house and car.
In light of the Fred incident, other banking executives were encouraged to hand back their annual bonuses, notably some staff members of AIG. This hasn't led to a sea-change in attitude, however. One of my colleagues was recently at a seminar on the crisis in London. He was speaking with a senior banker, who told him that people don't appreciate how important bonuses are for financial executives; 'They need bonuses to pay their children's school fees'. Indeed.
The figurehead of the disaster, symbolising the looting of the collective wealth by pin striped criminals, is the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank is one of the country's premier financial institutions. In the recent economic collapse, it managed to lose stupendous piles of money and is now majority-owned by the national government. As a reward for such excellence in economic performance, the former head of the bank, Sir Fred Goodwin, was awarded a large pension - performance-based, of course - totalling around £700,000 per year. Given that we taxpayers are propping up the entire bank, people have generally found it a bit much that Sir Fred has walked away with a footballer-esque annual salary in retirement. Someone was so upset that he or she vandalised Sir Fred's house and car.
In light of the Fred incident, other banking executives were encouraged to hand back their annual bonuses, notably some staff members of AIG. This hasn't led to a sea-change in attitude, however. One of my colleagues was recently at a seminar on the crisis in London. He was speaking with a senior banker, who told him that people don't appreciate how important bonuses are for financial executives; 'They need bonuses to pay their children's school fees'. Indeed.
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